Blog

Photographs of vacuum-packed couples

Yes, you read it right. This is probably the weirdest, freakiest, most dangerous - but also weirdly fascinating - photography idea I've seen recently.

Japanese photographer Haruhiko Kawaguchi puts Tokyo couples into an oversized ziploc bag - the kind of plastic bag you'd normally use to deep-freeze your leftovers in - then removes all air from the bag and photographs the result.

The photographer and his assistant take a few moments to position the couples in those oversized bags - on the floor, against a single-coloured background. Then, the bag is closed and a vacuum sucks all air out of it, creating a tightly sealed human 'sculpture'. As you can imagine, at this stage Haruhiko doesn't really have much time to piss about.

He has just a few seconds to take his shot from above and release the shrink-wrapped couple, who by that stage must be freaking out. I definitely would.